Arlington Public Schools continues to rank second in the Washington suburbs in per-student spending, according to new data from the Washington Area Boards of Education (WABE).
The Arlington school system has approved spending $18,563 per student during the current fiscal year, second only to Alexandria, which expects to spend $19,341, according to the recently issued report.
In recent years, Arlington, Alexandria and the city of Falls Church have all been in the upper tier of per-student spending in the region, with jurisdictions in Maryland and elsewhere in Northern Virginia falling into a lower spending strata.
(The District of Columbia is not included in the compilation.)
School systems compile their budgets in different ways, giving the public little opportunity to make an apples-to-apples comparison of spending. The annual WABE survey, put together by staff of the Fairfax County school system, attempts to equalize all the variables to present a fair ranking that is accepted by all the participating school districts.
The survey gives the following per-student spending costs, based on the adopted fiscal 2008 budgets of each of the school districts. Also included is the percentage change from the previous year's report:
Alexandria, $19,341 (up 6.1 percent); Arlington, $18,563 (up 3.3 percent); Falls Church, $18,474 (up 4.4 percent); Montgomery County, $14,705 (up 9.4 percent); Fairfax County, $13,407 (up 4.3 percent); Loudoun County, $12,751 (down 0.8 percent); Prince George's County, $12,107 (up 17.2 percent); Manassas City, $12,067 (up 0.3 percent); and Prince William County, $10,429 (up 0.9 percent).
The first five districts on the 2008 ranking held the same places on the 2007 survey. Among other school districts, Loudoun rose from seventh to sixth, Prince George's rose from ninth to seventh, Manassas dropped from sixth to eighth and Prince William County dropped from eighth to ninth.
There is no generally accepted correlation between per-student spending and quality of education. The cost of educating each student includes a wide array of variables, from class size to teacher pay.
Among the other details from the survey:
* Arlington's anticipated enrollment for the current school year is 18,517, ranking it sixth largest among the nine districts. Fairfax County, with more than 164,000 students, is the largest.
* Fairfax also has the largest budget, totaling more than $2.6 billion. Montgomery County is second, at $2.45 billion. Arlington's approved fiscal 2008 budget is $444 million.
* Arlington's schools consume 37.7 percent of the county's General Fund revenues, slightly higher than neighboring Alexandria but well below Loudoun County (72.5 percent), Montgomery County (61.1 percent) and Fairfax County (52.1 percent).
* Arlington's average class size per classroom teacher is 19.2 for elementary school, 19.4 for middle school and 18.8 for high school, the lowest in the region.
* Arlington's average teacher salary of $71,148 is the highest in the region, due in part to the salary plan and in part to the average length of tenure for teachers. The base starting salary of $42,965 is in the middle of the group.
* The maximum teacher salary in Arlington is $99,117, highest in the region. The maximum in Fairfax, by contrast, is $90,289.
* Arlington also has the highest cost for benefits; a hypothetical teacher earning $60,000 costs the school district an additional $27,636 in total benefits.
* The beginning hourly rate for school bus drivers in Arlington is $16.74, near the top of the list, while the maximum rate in Arlington is $28.98, also near the top.
* Arlington School Board members earn $19,500 per year, second only to Loudoun County, where board members earn $20,000. The chairman of the Arlington board earns $21,500, below Loudoun and Montgomery.
* More than 18 percent of students in Arlington's public schools are enrolled in an English as a Second Language program. Manassas has the largest such enrollment, at 27.5 percent.
* Nearly 5,200 Arlington students are in some form of special-education program.
* Roughly one-third of Arlington students are enrolled in the free or reduced-price lunch program. Across the region, the highest percentage is recorded in Alexandria (50 percent) while the lowest is in Falls Church (8.9 percent).
* The average SAT test score of Arlington students in the 2006-07 school year was 1623. Across the region, students in Falls Church scored the highest (1737) while students in Prince George's scored the lowest (1281).
The full survey runs about 60 pages, and can be found on the Fairfax County Public Schools Web site at
www.fcps.edu by searching for “WABE 2008.”
